Southern University begins laying off faculty, staff members

Published: Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 3:27 p.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 3:27 p.m.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The financial emergency that Southern University declared in October is showing up now as the Baton Rouge university begins to lay off tenured faculty members and staff.

Chancellor James Llorens said Friday that the immediate layoffs include fewer than 10 staff employees and tenured architecture professor John Delgado, who will lose his job as of Feb. 15.

A few more tenured faculty cuts were expected this month, Llorens said, but a few resignations and retirements offset that need.

Thirty more tenured faculty members could receive termination notices in March,

The chancellor said the extra cuts this month were required because of an extra $2.94 million state budget cut to Southern that came down in December because of declining state revenues.

Delgado, who said he plans to appeal his firing, informed the Southern Faculty Senate on Friday that he is being let go. Delgado said he was surprised and saddened.

The termination letter was dated Jan. 10, but Delgado said he did not get it until Monday because it was placed in his campus mailbox without any other notification. The letter states the termination was necessitated by the "current financial state of Southern ... resulting largely from decreased state funding ..."

Southern declared a financial emergency, called exigency, in October as a result of ongoing state budget cuts and student enrollment losses. Exigency, which is generally considered a serious blemish to a university, allows Southern to more easily lay off tenured faculty and ax degree programs.

The expedited layoffs of an estimated 52 non-faculty staff members are being "staggered" throughout the semester, Llorens said. In addition to eliminating more than 10 percent of the Southern faculty, the plan calls for staff layoffs in human resources, information technology and campus maintenance and then other terminations around the rest of the university, Llorens said in December. The academic college consolidations also will mean fewer deans and academic department heads, he said.

Faculty leaders on Friday continued to criticize Llorens and his administration for an alleged lack of transparency and faculty involvement in the campus reorganization process.

"Right now, they have the license to get rid of anyone they want to," said Faculty Senator Jacqulin Jacobs, who minutes prior argued, "There's too much corruption on this campus."

The Faculty Senate is demanding to know the procedures and criteria for terminations and that a proper appeals process is used. In the short term, Llorens said student credit hours and classes taught by each professor are being considered, as well as an academic department's ability to overcome the personnel losses. The larger reorganization effort is taking a more comprehensive approach to the reviews, he said.

Southern physics professor and Faculty Senate member Diola Bagayoko said Llorens is "administrating by manipulation."

The Southern "retrenchment and reorganization plan" approved in December also means consolidating many of the university academic colleges and departments. The draft plan would have the five colleges as the College of Education, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences; College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology; College of Business; College of Natural Sciences and Agriculture; and College of Nursing and Allied Health.

But the "target" goal also is to consolidate the number of academic department from 44 to 13, although Llorens said the number could change by the time the decisions are finalized at the end of the spring semester.

Bagayoko said most community colleges have more than 13 academic departments.

Faculty Senate Vice President Thomas Miller said such an "astounding structural change" would certainly mush differing academic programs that do not belong with each other into the same departments.

"No sane person would make such a major change without nefarious purposes ... to radically transform the institution," Miller said.

Southern Faculty Senate President Sudhir Trivedi also reiterated plans to sue the university while alleging that the university and the Southern Board of Supervisors ignored their own bylaws and guidelines for declaring and implementing exigency. The faculty has raised more than $10,000 for legal fees, he said.

Llorens has emphasized that the reorganization should eliminate the need for faculty and staff furloughs for the next school year.

Employees are required to take 10 percent of their job time off without pay for the current fiscal year that ends June 30.

After another school year of anticipated enrollment losses in 2012-2013, Southern's plan is projecting to start growing student enrollment. Continuing tuition increases also should offset some state budget cuts, according to the reorganization plan

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